Creative Writing Commons^™

The Advancement Of Surrealism: Navigating The Logical Implications Of Surrealism In Poetry Through Time, Brandon Hemsworth

Honors Projects

Surrealism is a complex medium of artistic expression that has persisted through the modern and postmodern time periods and into the contemporary. This project attempts to shine light on the importance of Surrealism by researching the rational implications of its irrational nature. I approached this question in two separate manners: One in a research perspective and one in a creative perspective. This project includes my research on the advancement of Surrealism and 15 poems that I have composed in reflection of Surrealism, Modernism, Postmodernism, the contemporary, and Anti-Realism. The conclusions of this project have important implications that have a common …

Shades Of Blue, Allison D. Thomas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Shades of Blue" is a confessional narrative that explores the ways in which our lives can be covered in a tinge of color. The experiences that shaped this collection are marked by the calm powder blues and rough midnight blues that change the way we see and think about the world. This narrative work took on a confessional voice because of the autobiographical nature of confessional poetry. Like other confessional collections this work is an exploration of the self and the truth of life. This collection was constructed by employing various poetic devices and forms. Several poems take on correspondent …

Vatra: A Poetic Memoir, Ashley Nichole Stevens

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

When I initially began researching for and composing this collection, the idea I had in mind was a simple one: tell my great grandfather's story, on many Lemko-American immigrants lived in the early 1900s. However, it took several months for me to realize this was not the complete story. It required refinement. While I had always felt a significant connection to this particular side of my family, I could never articulate why. The genealogical and historical research I conducted spoke for me. My great grandfather survived numerous traumas associated with being an ethnic minority in his homeland as well as …

The Book Of Ela Or Apokalypsis In Five Acts, Noah Leventhal

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Book of Ela or Apokalypsis in Five acts seeks first and foremost to investigate the layers of mental abstraction in which the human mind engages when thinking, and by extension, when writing. Writing and thinking do not end at the boundaries of genre. As such, I felt the styles therein should not stop at those boundaries either. Making use of influences such as Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, Renee Gladman and Rosemarie Waldrop, I have endeavored to use narrative as a to form more fully and poetically explore the contours of language, and by extension, the contours of the mind. …

Happy Objects And Bloom Spaces: Investigating The Potential Of Rupi Kaur's Poetry, Miguel Vega

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In response to the movement of what is considered and labeled as “Instagram poetry,” poet and critic Rebecca Watts argues that to consider “artless” poetry as “poetry” we are denigrating the artform. This project centers around Watts’ claim that “the reader is dead” due to their encounter with such poetry. This project acts as a conversation that seeks to understand why certain forms of art are considered a “threat” to those who engage with them, as well as to their respective fields. Using affect theory (specifically the theory of the happy object) we can begin to understand why we gravitate …

Monsters & Men, Christopher Ernest Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Monsters & Men is a collection of poetry and illustrations that explores the complex emotions associated with masculinity, grief, and personal development. I achieve this by heavily reflecting on my relationship with my late father and using this medium as an outlet to express my trauma in a healthy manner. How we perceive ourselves as men, and what is possible, is not reflected enough in society and I aim to be a proponent in stimulating the conversation revolving around men’s mental health. Men and the patriarchy impose themselves on others to the point where we need to address the unethical …

Thoughts, Feelings, Actions; The Brevity Of Being: A Haiku Method, Scott Medeiros

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The difficulties of delivering clinical services during the pandemic showed that there was a need for interventions that were able to be adapted to virtual sessions. In addition, lack of training and expertise regarding specialized therapies require modern day clinicians to be able to synergize current theory with the reality of the mental health landscape. In this study, 19 individuals participated in a psychoeducation group that taught a therapeutic thought mapping technique that was then adapted towards the creation of a haiku. It was noticed that participants were able to learn a psychological concept, apply it towards their life, create …

Digital Pastoral, Rebecca Holifield

Master's Theses

Digital Pastoral is a collection of original poems and a creative nonfiction essay, accompanied by a critical introduction.

Chronic Poetics: A Waiting Room Of One's Own, Madeleine Simmons

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This article explores chronic poetics, through my personal lens I take readers on a walk- through of poetry and the discussions surrounding chronic illnesses. I examine the current state of chronic illness and the nuances to its discussion. I analyze chronic illness in the context of disability studies, and touch on the tensions of categorizing chronic illness as a disability. As well as how to best navigate reading chronic poetics, as poets engage in new territories as they form a new language to describe their circumstances. While analyzing multiple poems from different authors, I explore why specifically the vessel of …

Womanist Poetics: Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, And Audre Lorde, Aya Telmissany

Theses and Dissertations

Today, the sentimentality associated with poetry is often condescendingly dubbed in a patriarchal society as “feminine poetry.” The first women poets who dared to attempt the pen were often met with attacks on their femaleness and harsh critiques of their writing which was likened to sorcery and witchcraft. Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Audre Lorde are three American women poets who countered these attacks and turned them inside out in favor of their own womanist poetics. They wrote about experiencing the world as women and most importantly about experiencing poetry as women. What happens to poetry when a woman appropriates …

To Want Too Much: Poems, Jacob Phillips

Graduate Masters Theses

This collection of poems captures a contemporary lived experience and moment by documenting, engaging with, and annotating upon feelings of modernity, present and emerging technologies, mysticism and spirituality, and intersections with present-day social order and issues. Equal parts recording and response, this thesis is response to the strange and precarious precipice of a contemporary life, this state of being alive and always on verge of something new, something beautiful, something futuristic, fantastical, dangerous, decisive, absurd, magical. It is the poet coming to terms with his own identity, queerness, and role within a world marked by the dichotomy of extremity and …

Follow The Shimmer, Meghan Bradbury

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Follow the Shimmer is a creative thesis collection of poems and songs that explore the depths of trauma, love, and healing. Told through the lens of fairy tale and fantasy, it is a story of grief and hope. Some of the tales are familiar, others are strange and abstract. Fables and nursery rhymes are remixed by the hands of a daughter who wishes for her deceased mother's touch. Archetypes and mythology are scrambled through the kaleidoscopic eyes of a woman who survives the violence of a patriarchal society. The world becomes a landscape of dangerous yet magical realms to discover; …

Adoration Above Objectification: The Promotion Of Other In Black, Mexican And Arabic Love Poetry, Joycelynn L. Baker

Honors Projects

This paper analyzes the philosophical fundamentals of sexual objectification and presents opposing literature, written in the 20th century, by Black, Mexican and Arabic male poets in contrast. In vigorous patriarchal environments that provide more opportunities to practice sexual objectification, the poets reframe male metaphysical perception and behavior in romantic or sexual contexts by promoting the autonomy and agency of women above themselves, and displaying their enjoyment of that situation. This paper will discuss how Western metaphysical philosophy impacts self-perception and belief in contemporary romantic contexts.

[They], Mary Alsobrooks

Poetry MFA Theses

A poetry collection centered around the exploration of identity through the people and places that shaped the poet's childhood.

Proclivities Of The Common Southern Wasp, Paul Bryant

Creative Nonfiction MFA Theses

A hybrid collection of poems and creative nonfiction essays exploring the author's relationship with his father and the American South.

My Body Is A Question Mark Lit From Within, Lisa Marie Schrad

Graduate Thesis Collection

In her MFA thesis “My Body Is a Question Mark Lit from Within,” Lisa Marie Schrad explores through poetry the body and its different appetites—hunger for justice, for healing, for God, for home, for wonder. Along the way, the poems also make clear that the path toward fullness and satisfaction must inevitably pass through a deep, brave commitment to knowing the full truth about ourselves. When a light shines out from inside the body, what shortcomings are exposed? What goodness is revealed? And how do we live in the world responsibly, kindly, from the space in-between our questions and their …

What We Need: A Poetic Study In Struggle And Self-Healing, Grace Anne Calabria

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In many ways, this thesis examines the eternal, repetitive inevitabilities of life. In a collection of poems, these inevitabilities are examined through the eyes of an observant and omniscient narrator: a girl, long in love with a boy, facing the struggles and rewards of learning to be alone in various ways after the 2020 pandemic. Because this thesis provides an examination of struggles and self-healing alongside its creative centerpiece of the collection, the poems are accompanied by a compilation of memoiristic reflections. This thesis contributes to conversations of mental health, love, growth, and finding legitimacy and value in creative work, …

Elegies For My Past And Future Selves, Tori Michelle Hicks

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

“Here I stand at the beginning
with more questions than
answers”
–George Ella Lyon, “Provenance” from A Many Storied House

This collection of poems and flash memoir tries to be memory in the flesh. Perhaps it’s the other way around – this book is composed of memories striving to be poems, pieces of music, flashes of memoir, and photographs, all for the purpose of exploring who I was, who I am, and who I could become. Whichever way one interprets it, Elegies for My Past and Future Selves is a hybrid collection that looks at the events of my past, …

La Tela, Un Fluir, Hugo Javier Moreno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Tesis para Escritura Creativa. Un libro de poesía. No se requiere abstracto.

The Kiss Turns: A Play On Aural Manor, Meredith Higgins

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Kiss Turns: A Play on Aural Manor is a poetic work that explores the nature of being and selfhood as they are expressed and modulated through the hearing, speaking, and writing of language. The Manor and surrounding Grounds here are presented as a fluid junk-mosaic: colorful, clamoring, thing-filled, magical, and on the move. Seven characters reside on the Manor’s property and live out their respective longings and loves, apprehending horror, tragedy, abundance, and the possibility of play through accepting and collaborating with the unknown depths of being.

Horsonnets, Shriram Sivaramakrishnan

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

‘Horsonnets’ was conceived and written between September 2019 and December 2021. As the name suggests, the collection is centered around horses, as objects of desire, metaphor, tropes. The collection is structured into four sections: ‘the way a horse frames blueness’, ‘to nurse a hurt’, ‘horsonnets’ and ‘landscape with horns’. Together, they all address different kinds of pain (horses became emblematic of that): bodily (‘the way a horse frames blueness’), historical (‘to nurse a hurt’), cultural (‘horsonnets’), and spiritual (‘landscape with horns’).

Kaboom, Karstin Margaret Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of original poems written between Fall 2018 and Spring 2022.

The End Of The Known World, Madeline Thomas

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This thesis forms the foundation for a poetry chapbook infused with Norse mythology and pain. It builds itself on two distinct strands. In the first, I reclaim the story of Hel, goddess of death, and attempt to humanize a figure historically branded as monstrous. Her life forms a narrative line through the collection that attempts to capture the whimsy and horror in myth. Intertwined with the goddess are poems centered around a contemporary speaker who suffers from chronic migraine, an autoimmune disease, unexplained tachycardia, and OCD. The poems in this personal strand vary heavily in both form and content but …

A Claiming Of Kin: A Linguistic Analysis Of Southern Appalachian English In Melissa Range's Scriptorium: Poems, Jolee White

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The research studies the Southern Appalachian dialect present in five poems in Melissa Range’s Scriptorium: Poems. The linguistic phenomena characteristic of Southern Appalachian English observed and analyzed in the poems include lexicon, grammatical features, and phonological aspects. The research seeks to bring attention to this Appalachian woman writer as well as to bring understanding of her reasoning behind incorporating the dialect in her poetry. It establishes that the five poems by Range contain the lexicon, grammatical features, and phonological aspects of the SAE dialect. It holds meaning both grammatically and pragmatically within the context of the poem and Appalachia.

Alice And Me, Myself, Little David, And The Right Side Of My Brain, David Cohen

Theses and Dissertations

This is an honest and open memoir of David Cohen’s life as it fits into the 13 years of therapy with Alice. The story is of David learning about his inner child and making a deal with him through non-dominant-hand writing. The result is for David to quit drinking and for the adult part of him to finally take control of his life. The narrative reviews key experiences of his past that influence the current issues.

The background research includes concepts from five key books that support Alice, the therapist’s, theories that have over 30 years of experience have developed …

Mosaic: A Lifetime Of Poems, Emma F. Bowen

Honors Projects

In hopes of providing a clearer picture of the aging process and its effects on our personalities, follow this collection of poems through diary-like entries of individuals navigating their lives from daycare, heartbreak, and loneliness. The impact that development can have on our psychological well-being and brains is fascinating and feels familiar. Why do we see the world so differently when we are young? As we grow older, what is so important that makes us shift how we view ourselves and our environment multiple times? It is often seen that each generation shares like-mindedness throughout their lives – why?

Where Life And Language Meet: An Interdisciplinary Collection In Context Of My Sámi Heritage, Miles Jordan Stevens

HON 499 Honors Thesis or Creative Project

Where Life and Language Meet is an interdisciplinary project exploring my Sámi heritage through research and the creation of a poetry collection. Following a brief historical background on the Sámi, the project showcases how my original poems are informed by Sámi storytelling practices. The analytical essay also explores how these poems fit into a larger framework of contemporary literature. Overall, this project demonstrates the creation of poetry as not only cultural heritage work but also a showcase for a culture not significantly explored in contemporary Western scholarship.

Bough And Hollow, Jeffrey Dylan Nutter

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to explore the complex relationships surrounding the speaker and the father. Furthermore, the poems contained here work to address the major themes of language, family, and home in an attempt at unraveling the self and discovering identity. Another important touchstone for this thesis is the thread of abuse throughout the father’s life. Together the various threads and themes of this thesis are working toward a collective understanding of how the past and present manifest in the body and voice of the speaker.

A Bird’S Eye View: Large-Scale Tonal Structures In Robert Schumann’S Four Song Cycles (Op. 42, 24, 39, And 48), Peter Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Some of Robert Schumann’s most notable works are his Lieder for solo voice and piano accompaniment. Schumann's Lieder are considered some of the best compositions in this genre, engendering various interpretations by performers and exciting vigorous debate among musicologists and theorists. Robert Schumann’s early music was almost entirely composed for the piano alone; it wasn’t until 1840 that he started to compose almost exclusively Lieder and song cycles inspired by his predecessors Beethoven and Schubert. This was a prolific year for Schumann compositionally, in part due to his marriage to Clara Schumann who was one of Europe’s most preeminent piano …

The Hard Truth, Elayna Clair Westman

English Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

The Hard Truth is a poetry manuscript that explores the significance of everyday choices whether we are dealing with grief, anger, hope, or exhaustion. These poems remind readers that the choices we make reveal the kind of relationship we have with God. If we follow God, we will love others and make sacrifices for them by working hard. If we follow the ways of the secular world, we will fall captive to Ptolemaic, self-centered viewpoints where we only care about ourselves. With a focus on Biblical narratives, the poems in this manuscript ask readers to examine God’s character as we …